To that I've added two new paintings as well. The first is a simple silhouette of a dogs head. Long story how I wound up with it, but it's going for super cheap because it was a case of measuring once and painting twice.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Feeling refreshed? Excited? Like you could face the day head on and conquer whatever befalls your path?

Then you must not be doing NaNoWriMo because we just crossed into the windless doldrums that is week two.

While Week One is the excitement and joy of Christmas Morning as you tear off the wrapping around your brain and see what falls out onto paper. Week Two is the mind crushing boredom of having to watch The Christmas Story for the 75th time that day waiting for a dinner more substantial than all the sugar in the world while your Great Aunt places her feet upon your back as if you're some ottoman.

I think Week Three is the Boxing Day of Nano but with slightly less punches thrown.

Week Four is some kind of rabbit with a vendetta against squirrels. I haven't fully worked out my metaphors, but you get the gist.

Week Two:

If you just played that song three times, then you must be in deep, scrabbling to get even 400 words down in stone, or papyrus, or whatever crazy ass font you're trying now instead of actually writing.

So now I should be offering some kind of advice, or a pep talk, or perhaps a small mint to try and magically solve the problem I used Muppets to show?

Yeah, there's no cure. I'm sorry. Your novel only has three weeks to live.

But don't give up now. You don't want to leave your 12,000 words orphaned, forced to join with street gangs and adorably ask for more commas, Sir.

Batten down the hatches, shut out the rest of the world, enter into some disturbing sensory deprivation where it's just you, an internet-less laptop, and a jar.

You'll either come out with a novel or be dressed like a turn of the century peanut salesman. 60:40.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

I was going to tell you all that, thanks to a bright sunny afternoon, a nice gain in word count, and getting the monster re-chained up in the background I was able to finally list my little Adipose ornament.

I say I was going to tell you but it's already sold. So hopefully the next one I make doesn't go as quickly.

Friday, November 2, 2012

It's November 2nd, which means I have decided to go for the three-peat of losing about 30 days in the much maligned month of November in an insane quest to cobble together 50,000 or so words.

Plenty of people have advice on how to defeat the multi-headed monster that is NaNo. As for me, what I know best is how not to do things.

#1. Do not gouge your finger on a wooden fence when trying to hang a skeleton.

While staring down the gun of a blank page, you already find your brain raging against putting those fingers to the keys. Throw in a blind searing pain every time you want to put down an A and suddenly skipping this year and taking up snake milking sounds like a much more preferable hobby.

And on that note:

#2. Do not be into Halloween!

While most of my writing friends are spending Halloween both gorging on teeny Snickers and counting down to midnight with research clasped to their bosoms, I am either hanging said skeletons, watching over said skeletons, or later taking down said skeletons.

I have pretty much resigned myself that I will be skipping the first day of every single NaNo I take on because hunting every single store for things I can corrupt for next years Halloween display trumps hammering out 1,600 words every time.

#3. Do not have a dog

Or cat, or bird, or pet rock, or a rather clingy toaster. Anything that you cannot drop in front of a video game will not understand why and that free time you once had to play is now trapped within the bitter love story of a man whose princess was turned into an elephant by a rather confusing gypsy curse.

Instead they will beg, plead, and then sigh loudly for how often you now spend your time blissfully ignoring them.

#4. Do not have interests outside of writing.

Last year it was Skyrim. This year it started with Baldur's Gate, then the Mass Effect announcements, then the Lego LOTR. I was guaranteed to have a billion different things I'd much rather do than struggle through the plot disaster where the gypsy finds herself married to a luchador. Never mind anything at the movie theater, parties, or ever seeing my family again.

And on top of it all, I've stupidly gotten into making Christmas ornaments and losing all of November for the christmas rush means I ain't getting a damn thing out the door.

Dwarves in Space

Thousands of years after the jewelry's destroyed, the sword reforged, the dragon ridden, and the indecipherable prophecy translated into a recipe for sugared biscuits, the dwarves turned to that final frontier: space. And along came the elves, orcs, gnomes, trolls, ogres, and those vermin-like upstarts, humans.

The King's Blood

Ciara, a black servant into her sixteenth year, finds herself on a mad quest across the countryside trying to get the second son and possibly only hope of the severed Ostero line back onto his throne. Along the way, she and Aldrin...